page_title: Stage lighting
section_title: Focus, position, and hanging
hierarchical_section_title: Stage lighting / Qualities in lighting / Focus, position, and hanging
caption_attribution_description: An electrics batten in a theater which has many stage lights on it. From left to right: Scoop,Fresnel, Source Four Jr, Fresnel,2 PARNels, 2 Lekos, leko with top hat, fresnel with top hat, ande, barely visible fresnel
context_page_description: Stage lighting is the craft of lighting as it applies to the production of theater, dance, opera, and other performance arts. Several different types of stage lighting instruments are used in this discipline. In addition to basic lighting, modern stage lighting can also include special effects, such as lasers and fog machines. People who work on stage lighting are commonly referred to as lighting technicians or lighting designers.
  The equipment used for stage lighting are also used in other lighting applications, including corporate events, concerts, trade shows, broadcast television, film production, photographic studios, and other types of live events. The personnel needed to install, operate, and control the equipment also cross over into these different areas of "stage lighting" applications.
context_section_description: The focus is where an instrument is pointed. The final focus should place the "hot spot" of the beam at the actor's head level when standing at the center of the instrument's assigned "focus area" on the stage. Position refers to the location of an instrument in the theater's fly system or on permanent pipes in front-of-house locations. Hanging is the act of placing the instrument in its assigned position.
  In addition to these, certain modern instruments are automated, referring to motorized movement of either the entire fixture body or the movement of a mirror placed in front of its outermost lens.  These fixtures and the more traditional follow spots add direction and motion to the relevant characteristics of light.  Automated fixtures fall into either the "moving head" or "moving mirror/scanner" category.  Scanners have a body which contains the lamp, circuit boards, transformer, and effects (color, gobo, iris etc.) devices.  A mirror is panned and tilted in the desired position by pan and tilt motors, thereby causing the light beam to move.  Moving head fixtures have the effects and lamp assembly inside the head with transformers and other electronics in the base or external ballast.  There are advantages and disadvantages to both.  Scanners are typically faster and less costly than moving head units but have a narrower range of movement.  Moving head fixtures have a much larger range of movement as well as a more natural inertial movement but are typically more expensive.
  The above characteristics are not always static, and it is frequently the variation in these characteristics that is used in achieving the goals of lighting.
  Stanley McCandless was perhaps the first to define controllable qualities of light used in theater. In A Method for Lighting the Stage, McCandless discusses color, distribution, intensity and movement as the qualities that can be manipulated by a lighting designer to achieve the desired visual, emotional and thematic look on stage. The McCandless method, outlined in that book, is widely embraced today. The method involves lighting an object on the stage from three angles—2 lights at 45 degrees to the left and right, and one at 90 degrees (perpendicular to the front of the object).
  An alternative formulation is by Jody Briggs, who calls them Variable of Light: Angle, Color, Intensity, Distance, Texture, Edge-quality, Size, and Shape.
caption: Many stage lights hang on a batten focused in several directions
exif: {}